Saturday, February 05, 2011

"The states of the Middle East are modern creations"

"Whatever their claims to antiquity, all the states of the Middle East are modern creations, a result of the collapse of the Ottoman and Czarist Russian empires at the end of World War I, and of the interaction of these states with a modern global system of political, military, and economic power.

When it comes to particular forms of claim and symbol, a similar modernity applies. Neither the claims of Islamists nor of Zionist politicians to be recreating a lost past are valid. The concept of the Islamic state, propounded in Shi'ism by Ayatollah Khomeini through the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9, and that of a revived Caliphate, endorsed by conservative Sunnis including al-Qa'ida, are modern political projects. The state of Israel, for example, bears no relation except rhetorically to the ancient kingdoms of Solomon and David. Many of the most potent symbols of contemporary politics are also recent creations. Thus the Saudi monarchy's claim to be khadim al-haramain ('Servant of the Two Holy Places') was introduced only in 1986, and then in order to head off rival claims by King Hussein of Jordan to be the patron of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem; while Osama Bin Laden's comparable term for Arabia, bilad al-haramain, ('Land of the Two Holy Places') is an invention of his. All the monarchies in the Middle East claim ancient, ritualised, legitimacy, but they are, in fact, creations of the twentieth century, of the vogue for kingship that, late in the day, swept the Arab world, and, not least, of attentive, and at times military, support given to them at times of crisis by their more powerful friends in Europe and the US."

This is actually incorrect. Most of the Middle Eastern states, but not all, are actually based upon Ottoman provinces. I recently looked at a map of the Ottoman Empire from 1683 and Egypt has almost the exact same boundaries as today, So did Tunisia. Libya, Algeria, etc, as well. There were large desert regions connected to them later on, but their northern boundaries were almost the same as their modern ones. Kuwait on the other hand, was carved out by the British from Iraq's Basra.

Read the interview I just did. Iraq is also based upon the Ottoman Empire.

They forgot to give the Kurds a state. If the Al Sabah clan got their own country, why didn't other clans and tribes? Why don't the Shia living in the east of the Arabian peninsula have their own country?

Probably because they largely stuck with existing provincial boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. Like I said, with a few exceptions, ie Kuwait, the modern Arab states are based upon Ottoman boundaries going back hundreds of years.

Here's a map of the three areas that would become Iraq in 1914, and note, the Kurdish north is included in the vilayet of Mosul, and that did not include the Kurdish areas of Basra, or the Kurdish areas of Syria or Turkey.

Baghdad in 2000: "A woman known as Um Haydar was beheaded reportedly without charge or trial at the end of December 2000. She was 25 years' old and married with three children. Her husband was sought by the security authorities reportedly because of his involvement in Islamist armed activities against the state. He managed to flee the country. Men belonging to Feda'iyye Saddam came to the house in al-Karrada district and found his wife, children and his mother. Um Haydar was taken to the street and two men held her by the arms and a third pulled her head from behind and beheaded her in front of the residents. The beheading was also witnessed by members of the Ba'ath Party in the area. The security men took the body and the head in a plastic bag, and took away the children and the mother-in-law. The body of Um Haydar was later buried in al-Najaf. The fate of the children and the mother-in-law remains unknown."